Lame Adventure 209: Strange Beer-fellows

This is a public service announcement from Lame Adventures.  Although wine and sake are my alcoholic beverages of choice, I have been drinking much more beer as of late in order to pay my bills and make rent.  Last Thursday I was in Trader Joe’s on the Upper West Side when I noticed they had a brew called KBC Blueberry Wheat Ale.

The six-pack was on sale for $5.99, an even better price than the $14.99 I’ve been paying for a twelve-pack of Heineken.  I was more concerned about this being wheat ale and the thought of getting a raging yeast infection starting in the nether regions and rocketing up to my eyeballs I so irrationally feared the wheat in this beverage.  Then I reasoned that all beer is made with brewer’s yeast, so I told myself, “Relax.”

Oddly for me, my usual high degree of skepticism was completely dormant over what this ale might taste like.  In general I like ale, particularly Bass.  The fruit of choice, the blueberry, is one I like very much, too, particularly fresh blueberries atop the flavor-free organic wood shavings I eat for breakfast every morning at work.  Had the fruit been one I abhor such as the cantaloupe, I would have recoiled considering that as repulsive a flavor in ale as banana or prune.  I was also seduced by the price and reasoned even if it tasted lousy, the more I drank, the less lousy it would taste, reminiscent of Marlene Wackcrunch, a girl I dated in high school who physically brought to mind a platypus, but she was a great kisser, even more so when I was hammered on ale.  I also reasoned if KBC Blueberry Wheat Ale was indeed dreadful, I’d share it with my sidekick, Greg, who has far wider ranging taste in alcohol than I.  In fact, I would not be surprised if he eventually tells me that he’s downed shots of lighter fluid.  Hey, the guy’s a musician.

On Friday, I returned home from work, grabbed my first bottle of KBC Blueberry Wheat Ale, popped open the top, took a swig and nearly projectile spat it across the entirety of my sanctum sanctorum.  I was not mentally prepared for sweet-tasting suds that were so intensely blueberry flavored I thought I had just downed a pint of fresh fruit.  This is truly an ale that would go well with pancakes.  Until that moment, I had never considered pancakes and ale a couple.  Enlightening.  Disgusting.  I immediately grabbed a juice glass and poured a little in to see if this beverage was blue.  It wasn’t.

There was no way I was going to dump this fruit-flavored gag-inducing breakfast beverage concoction on Greg.  He would have truly needed a twelve-pack of Heineken to wash away the blueberry taste.  Over the course of the weekend, I somehow got all six bottles of KBC Blueberry Wheat Ale down thanks to a Secretariat-size dose of anesthesia I had administered to my taste buds.  Upon reflection, I would rate this beverage just a notch above Moviprep, a slimy, salty, lime-ish flavored colon cleanse often prescribed in preparation for a colonoscopy.  Buyer beware.